A Man and a Brother. A novel, etc

Chapter I

Julius Monro was a man who avoided disagreeable sensations on principle, and would have sacrificed a good many moral scruples at any time to escape a scene. If he could have had his way he would have left London without again encountering his brother, who had become suddenly an unpleasantly aggressive sort of impersonation of an accusing conscience — and that was a voice which Julius had perfectly succeeded, by judicious treatment, in suppressing. But when a message was brought to him that his brother was well enough to see him and re quested him to call at such an hour at Mrs. Heriot's house, Julius did not see hoAv it was vol. in. A possible to shirk the interview without an almost brutal degree of callousness which would lead to, Avhat he held also in aversion, a very bad appearance. No ! the thing must be gone through with.

If he kept his own temper and that fictitious dignity of manner, which does duty for rectitude of soul, it could not put him to much disadvantage. But he found himself hoping rather fervently that the mauvais quart d' heure, which he expected, would not include the confronting of either Mrs. Heriot or Miss Fletcher. He shrugged his shoulders — ment ally — at the idea of dreading anything Gordon might say or do, but he could not contemplate indifferently that scorn of Marjorie's, which had taken the place of her old admiration, for he completely believed that she had admired if she had not loved him. He never could fancy women indifferent to him. His vanity was spared this supreme trial ; there were no signs of either aunt or niece in the house when he called there at the appointed time, impressively dressed and wearing his very grandest manner, Avhich could hardly be said to be wasted on the desert air, since it deeply struck first the man servant who opened the door, and next the nurse who came down to show him the way to his brother's room.

She confided to Alice that she didn't believe she had ever seen in all her life such a fine-looking, fine-spoken gentleman as Mr. Monro's brother. Alice, who was to a certain extent in the confidence of her mistresses, sniffed a little at the description and simply re marked with no great originality that "hand some was as handsome did." Her passionate loyalty to Marjorie would have made her see nothing in a royal prince if her oracle pronounced him unworthy. Julius found himself in a large, cosy room, from which the afternoon sunshine had been excluded, so that it was a moment or two before his eyes, accustomed to the brightness of the glaring street, could make out its details, amongst which was the gaunt form of Gordon, half lying in a lounge chair, " clothed and in his right mind," however.

Mrs. Heriot, the nurse, and the doctors considered him to have made remarkable progress, and that his looks did them credit, but the ghastly paleness, the hollows in temple and cheek, and the deep, purple sockets in which his blue eyes looked painfully large and vivid, struck on Julius as an unpleasant memento moil. For a moment pity, something of softness, of compunction, some far-off forgotten memory of days when they were boys together, with their small arms round each other's slender shoulders, hatching some delicious bit of mischief — when they had some fondness for each other, some pleasure in being together, and farther away still when two tiny, bloused, curly-headed mortals sat one on each side of their mother, rapt in the fairy world of wonder to which she introduced them, telling them in her soft, vibrating, sensitive voice of Rumpelstiltzchen, of Cinderella, of Bluebeard — these long, silent voices awoke and echoed in Julius' world-hardened heart, and he felt the subtle chain of kindred, which had been worn almost to breaking, pulling it again.

He stammered in the effort to say something kind, something about his hoping that he had pulled through, though he looked bad enough still, " Oh, yes, I'm through, thank you," Gordon's voice said calmly. It was a weak enough voice, and yet it impressed his brother oddly with a new sense of strength, of mental power. He felt instinctively that they stood on a different footing, that Gordon had suddenly grown out of the reach of his former easy, contemptuous, half-disgusted toleration. "It was a stiffish pull, but I have been let off this lime." "That's right," Julius said, making an effort to speak heartily and with ease, " thanks, I suppose, to good nursing, and so on. Mrs. Heriot's been awfully benevolent." " Yes," Gordon returned, adding nothing to the brief monosyllable ; he did not intend to open out on this subject to his present listener.

" I shall be up to work very soon, I hope — " he paused a moment, and Julius felt the silence very embarrassing. What did the fellow mean ? Was he, in spite of all, contemplating a return to the studio, to their former curious relations ? " I've got a good many years to make up for," Gordon went on, with an effort, and yet composedly enough ; " a pretty chaotic confusion of insanity and imbecility. I suppose I need not say very much — it is not a pleasant subject ; you understand that I've cut myself off from what has been ; you know that you and I need have as little as possible to do with each other? It Avon't be a very bitter pang for either of us to part." A faint sarcastic smile just crossed his face. Julius almost forgot to be dignified. " What happened at the studio while I was away ?

" he asked abruptly, looking at his well made boot with a fixed stare, as he lightly flicked his cane against it. "I was left to con jecture. The picture was spoilt, you know. You put me in a devil of a hole." "Oh, I have no doubt you got out of it," Gordon said, with the same slight movement of the lips, hardly a smile. " You have a genius for making things look right. Nothing very remarkable or tragical happened : it was simply that Miss Fletcher accidentally lit on our — our peculiar method of composing portraits and I pious folks would say I was converted. / don't say that, but I made up my mind to leave oft being the mixture of fool and knave to which I had attained. I am going to try if there's any stuff surviving in me by which I can make potboilers at anyrate, if nothing better. And I shall not darken your studio any more, Julius."

" I suppose she means to publish the whole story abroad," Julius said sullenly. The sudden collapse of his suave, graceful self-assurance struck Gordon as almost pathetic. He pre ferred the naturalness of the voice and bearing, which oddly recalled old scrapes and miseries of the days of innocent boyhood — innocent by comparison, though boys often feel themselves stained and loaded with the guilt of offences, at which manhood laughs. " I think not," he said quickly, " I am sure she will not. And there is nothing to be said on that point between you and me- — except that you had the best of it in eA'ery way, and kept clear of the disreputable, shabby part of the business. Don't think for a moment that I mean to come the Pharisee about it. I was a fool and worse, and you were- — well, perhaps there's no need to say what.

It's done, it's over, it's grown impossible, that's all." " Yes, it's done. I mean to cut the whole concern," Julius said, raising his head with a sudden reassumption of coolness. " I had come to the conclusion before I saw you. I daresay I could have gone on painting if I chose, but I have decided to chuck the work altogether. I'm going to let the house and studio, and to travel." Gordon was amused by the cool appearance of choice. It tickled him to perceive that Julius intended to keep up the delusion, that it was he who had done with '' art," not that art had become as impossible to him as writing an epic. " Well," he said quietly, " I daresay you are wise." His tone irritated Julius. " Ifyou mean that I feel I have any reason to leave England," he began with some fierce ness, ''you are talking rot.

I don't suppose you are going to spread reports against me, and if you did I don't much fancy they'd be believed. I am going for my own pleasure simply and solely ; I am only carrying out an intention I've had sometimes." " Ah ! And are you going by yourself? " " No," Julius said, with an air of great non chalance, " I mean to take my wife with me." " Your wife ! Are you married already ? " " I shall be in a few days — I detest a fuss on such occasions, so we agreed to keep the thing quiet. I don't suppose the lady is one after your heart — but she suits me, and her fortune suits me — it is Mrs. Vansittart." " Indeed," Gordon said drily. He had seen Mrs. Vansittart ; what was more he had heard her at the studio. He had worked on her portrait with a sort of cynical pleasure, he remembered, in heightening the latent coarse ness of the handsome, sensual face ; he considered it was quite an unnecessary cere mony to say anything politely false on the subject.

There was a moment's silence, during which the brothers stared into each other's faces with a curious sensation as if they were looking into those of strangers. For years they had met almost daily, yet of intercourse, of sympathy, of liking even there had been nothing between them — absolutely nothing. Instead, there was on one side an indifferent, chilly sort of contempt — that which one feels for the " poor fellow who was no one's enemy but his own ; " on the other a deeper-seated, unexpressed, but as complete a scorn for " the sham which had been successful, but was neither envied nor disturbed. Each had felt himself the other's superior : the one with his desolate wreck of an existence as much as he whose bark had floated gaily, with pennons flying, on a tranquil sea. Gordon had never despised himself quite so utterly as not to know there was that within him to which Julius had never and could never attain.

He had lived in a dream, in a fog in which it was at times im possible to tell the real from the imaginary. Now it had cleared from around him, he looked on his brother with a new acuteness. Sons of the same parents, nursed at the same bosom, yet how far apart ! From to-day they might never look each other in the face again, and neither would regret it ! That very reflection stirred something of kindness in the breast of the one who had brought out of the storm and disaster of his life a remnant of the early tenderness which once had warmed and thrilled it through and through. "After all, Julius," he said, and his voice was gentle, "after all, there is something in kindred — we had the same mother." " My good fellow, don't let us sentimental ise," Julius returned with almost a sneer ; as kindness rose in Gordon it had sunk and died in him ; he only remembered that this was the detected forger, the opium-eater, whom he had despised for years, who was now posing somehow as a critic, if not a judge.

" Brothers or not, there never has been any love lost be tween us — I don't suppose we are likely to see much of each other, and I have not the time to spare over long adieux." He made a movement to rise. "Stop a moment," Gordon said rather hurriedly, with a rising colour ; " there is a thing I wanted to say. You are my younger brother, and, rightly or wrongly, I don't say you are a rich man, but you are not far from being so, while I am almost penniless — " he paused to draw breath, the effort he was making was physically and mentally painful. " Ah, you want money, I suppose," Julius said with a sort of cool insolence, drawing his cheque book from his pocket. " Yes ; how much ? " " I want what I think I have done enough dirty work for — my last wages," Gordon said sternly; "not as a savour — as a loan or as wages, whichever you please.

I want to pay John Pike, who has saved my life — the woman who has nursed me — " " Oh, I thought your adopted mother or aunt, or what is it, found the shot ! Doesn't she ? " " I will not speak of anything of that sort," Gordon said through his teeth in a low voice of concentrated scorn ; " let's keep to business. Will you let me have what you choose. I would not take it if I did not feel there was no obligation possible between you and me — " Something had roused the devil in Julius Monro's soul ; all that was worst in him was at the surface. He wrote the cheque to the exact amount of that other cheque — that sons et origo mali of Gordon's first youth. He signed it with the big " J. Monro " and flourish almost exactly like his father's, and handed it to Gordon with an evil smile. But Gordon did not glance at it before he thrust it into his pocket.

Not a word passed on the transac tion. Julius rose and put out his hand mechanically. Gordon remembered as his met it how seldom even so much of friendship had passed between them. " Good-bye," he said slowly, gravely, without a touch of bitterness. "I wish you — happiness." " Thanks. Good-bye. Hope you'll be all right soon, and keep up all your exalted ideas — if you do I may hear of you — you won't hear anything about me. This day week, I hope there may be some thousands of miles between me and this Philistine island ; we shall neither of us mind how many. Good-bye ! " He nodded, and the door closed behind him. " Poor fool ! He'll go back on the old habits," was his charitable reflection, as he went downstairs. " He's just frightened out of them for the present. I've done with him, thank God."

But before he could shake off the very dust of all memories connected with Gordon, Julius had one more short ordeal. He opened the house door just as Mrs. Heriot and Marjorie had alighted from the carriage in front of it; they were at the bottom step as he stood at the top. That inexorable mistress, etiquette, demanded a proper greeting. He had to take Mrs. Heriot's hand, limp and chilly enough, and to meet Marjorie's half-smiling, unem barrassed glance of perfect understanding. He could not imagine that he could ever have thought her anything but hard-looking, un attractive, unbeautiful — a goddess would have had no charm for Julius, if she had not looked at him with kindness. " You have seen Gordon ? " Mrs. Heriot said in her brusque way. " Yes. He looks ill — but he says he is nearly right, thanks to your goodness."

" Oh, I've been glad to do anything for him," Mrs. Heriot cried with a curious change of manner. " I am so thankful to see him recover ; " then with a return to stiffness, transparently inimical she went on : "and you are leaving England, Mr. Monro, we hear, and going to be married. It is all very sudden, »__. *___. ") " isn t it ? " Well, rather," he returned with an easy smile, hiding the disgust he felt at her rude ness. " Neither my suture wife nor I have anything to wait for. I must wish you good bye, rather than good afternoon." " Good-bye," Mrs. Heriot repeated curtly, adding not a word of congratulation or courtesy, and passing on into the house. Marjorie felt constrained by her bluntness to say something vaguely, coldly civil ; they shook hands and parted with this murmur of insincere compli ment ; and he consoled himself with an inward bad word or two as he strode rapidly aAvay with a sensation of mingled rage and relief.

It was just the consolation he wanted to meet Linda, and be flattered by her passionate caresses and unvarnished phrases of love. He had never received them with so much warmth. After an excellent dinner, plenty of dry cham pagne and an operetta as sparkling to finish up with, Julius could feel good-humoured again, and his angry vanity went back growling and hid itself in the inmost recesses of his mind like a satisfied, well-fed beast. Thank God, as he phrased it, he had done forever with his brother Gordon, with that girl, and with an episode he intended never to allow to be resuscitated. He had no sense of degradation on re-entering life at a new door ; though it opened on a lower stage than any Avhere he had played his part before. Heaps of money, and a handsome woman who had a real passion for him, were, he considered, not to be despised.

" He was his father's son always, he has nothing of me in him ; " these were words his mother had uttered once when some hateful conviction of the meanness under his fair outside had forced itself upon her. Between the brothers that "salt, unplumbed, estranging sea," which divides all of us from each other, was never to be bridged by the sudden, subtle sympathies which sometimes turn that solitude in which we live into a region peopled with affinities. They went their several ways as strangers, and the sons of one household should meet no more. II VOL.

Chapter II

Like Othello in one respect, if singularly unlike in others, John Pike, surgeon, felt his occupa tion gone. The interest of his rather dreary days of hard, ill-paid toil had centred round one house, and now there was no longer a decent excuse for keeping "Gordon Monro, Esquire," on his books. He was no longer a " case," a patient ; he had recovered, had paid the money part of his obligation to the un couth, clever surgeon, with the warmest and most sincere of thanks and praise. Very soon he was going, as Mrs. Heriot's guest still, to Shellford — at the same time Miss Fletcher was to join the Classons. The house where John Pike had revelled in new sensations was to be left to darkness, silence, and a married policeman. Mr. Pike paid his farewell visit as a friend by invitation, dined sumptuously (to his simple taste) with tAvo Avell-dressed ladies ; one of whom was dazzling in his eyes in a soft, sheeny, sea-green silk, with blush roses, and with Gordon Monro himself, looking thin and white enough, but out of the clutch of invalidism.

After dinner, at which his professional eye had noticed Gordon's entire abstinence with cautious approval, the two men sat at the window and smoked a sober and moderate pipe, the first and only one allowed Gordon on the occasion. As it grew dusk it was easier to talk confidentially — their hearts were opened to one another; strangely unlike as they were in nature, disposition, tastes, and fortunes, each had a strong friendly feeling for the other. " Now, mind, Monro, mind, your whole future life depends on the months that are coming ! " Pike called out suddenly and fervently, breaking on a thoughtful silence. " If you let your demon in again, now the house is swept and garnished, he'll bring with him spirits worse than before — ' The state of that man,' etc. I needn't go on quoting Scrip ture, it's hardly my line, is it ?

" "Well, it's appropriate, and I know you are speaking the truth. If I do, Pike, it will be once and for all. I don't think I could stand my own disgust at myself. Old fellow, I haven't said half to you that I've been seeling — you haven't been a doctor to me but a saviour — " "Well," John said gruffly — he always grew more and more gruff as his feelings were moved ; "I have done something, but there's others have done, more — " " Oh, trust me, I don't forget ! " Gordon's voice, a pathetic one, rich and low-toned and thrilling with emotion, which, and the ex pression of which, came far more easily to him than to the other. He had a good deal of the woman in him — her sensitiveness, quick in stincts, tenderness, and impressionableness. " There are things one doesn't cease to think of and remember as 'long as memory holds her seat in this distracted globe.' There are two people in the world, if not more, who have a right to ask anything of me, and you are one of them, old fellow."

"Well I'm glad you're through, that's all," John Pike said with a great sigh. " It's all over now — I go back to my grindstone. I don't suppose I shall ever be here again." " Why, Pike, what are you talking about? Why shouldn't you ? Mrs. Heriot is not the sort to throw over a friend — she feels you to be a friend." " No, no. I know well enough she ain't that sort. She's a trump, that woman, she's got a heart ; as a rule when they're rich and — and swells they haven't." "Swells!" Gordon said laughing. "Come, that doesn't apply." " I suppose not — to your thinking. You are on a level with her. Yes ; don't say a word against it. You are, though you're a poor devil, and have gone pretty low in the world ; still, for all that you're of her Avorld, and of — of Miss Fletcher's. You know hoAv to speak, how to move, how to behave.

It comes natural to you to get up to open the door for 'em, to see when they want a bell rung or a window shut, it's just as natural to you as moving and breathing, but as to me — well, I'm a boor — no one knows that better than I. My father was a farmer — till I went to the hospitals I'd never chummed with a gentleman. I forced my way up because I was born clever and obstinate, and could not stand a shop, but I'm uneasy, clumsy, a fool with women like these. They are not grand, I know, they put no side on — they're just as friendly and natural as can be, but I've seen, I've noticed Miss Mar — Miss Fletcher's eyes twinkle at some of my awkward dodges. I've seen her look at my big-nailed boots, at my frayed shirt cuffs. I've always to think to myself, what's the proper thing to do now, and then I forget to do it !

I'm not a cad, at least I hope I'm not, but I'm a boor, and I oughtn't to mind going back to my equals — but I do. I've never seen anyone like these two, and I don't expect I ever shall. I'm spoilt for those I've got to live among." He spoke with a rude sort of fire. Gordon, Avith the quick sympathy that was part of him, guessed at the feeling that loosened his tongue. " You need not live amongst people you don't care for, Pike," he said slowly ; " you've got ability enough to get higher up the ladder." " Ability! " the other said, with a bitter laugh, " d'you suppose it's ability that gets a fellow on in my profession. Look at Burgess ! I know twice what he does ; he's a wretched hand at diagnosis, worse almost at treatment in critical cases; what gets him on and gives him the right to be so confoundedly patronising to me ?

Manner, my good fellow, manner and tact. I tell you tact makes up three parts of success, and I haven't an ounce. No, a third-rate, slumming practice is my fate for life, and I must swallow it." " You should take a house— a nice wife. You might at least be comfortable and happy." John Pike got up abruptly, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and moved aimlessly about in search of tobacco or matches which lay close to his hand. " No," he said, suddenly and jerkily, "I'm spoilt for that too — any wife who'd be likely to take me — they wouldn't do — after — after — damn it, Monro, hold your tongue ! I'm making an ass of myself — you're such a fellow for Avheedlincr one on to talk. Let's have no more of this. I've got one or two things more to say to you about your treatment of yourself. Ifyou get bad again I'll never try my skill on another such case !

" He resolutely kept to the subject he had chosen, and went on with short, decided, trenchant sentences containing the best of ad vice. Gordon listened dreamily ; the broken words that had escaped against his will from the strong fellow's heartache, had told him a secret. Marjorie, unsuspecting, careless, kind after her fashion, had, with perfect unconscious ness, made herself into John Pike's ideal. He would rather have cut his throat than have o-iven her the faintest hint, and he knew, with rugged common-sense, that in time he should recoA'er, and perhaps care for some other girl in a different, more practical way, but she had altered the colouring of life and enlarged its horizon for him. Good love, however ill-placed, would do him good in the end. Gordon was sorry for him ; he had no difficulty in under standing, in sympathising, something in his own secret heart acted as interpreter.

He was not of the stuff of Julius, for whom those cynically careless, light verses might have been written — " What care I how fair she be, If she be not fair for me?" There are men — and both these were of them — who care very much that "she" is fair and sweet and good, if the fairness, sweetness, and goodness is never lent to them to make life as perfect as life may be. Doctor and patient parted with a very close and kindly shake of the hand, but without more confi dences, when it was too late for John Pike to linger any longer in the palace of delight, which the mere fact of one woman's living there made the commonplace London house appear to him. He went home, inwardly groaning, but Avith an outAvard air of stolid nonchalance, to his untidy, unlovely rooms above the chemist's shop, where a delightful mixed odour of ether, peppermint, and tobacco lingered, instead of the subtle fragrance of those flowers — roses, lilies, mignonette, heliotrope, and their other SAveet sisters — with which Marjorie loved to fill the places where she stayed.

It was the hopeless prose of existence which closed round him and shut out the fanciful fabric of dreams. If Marjorie had guessed how the good-hearted, blunt, unculti vated man had idealised and romanced about her, she would not have spoken of him with careless good-nature as she did — he was a good fellow and a clever doctor ; she allowed she liked him, but she could wish he did not speak quite so roughly and knew how to move Avithout knocking down everything he touched. She had too many things on her mind to have many thoughts to waste on poor John Pike. She was rather glad of a whirl of preparations which kept her from dwelling on the slight indefinite soreness that was between her and her aunt — she did not care, did not wish to define or look into the source of it. If jealousy, she knew it was a paltry and un worthy passion for one who cared to keep her emotions to a high level ; if love of influence and power, and dislike of feeling herself less necessary than she desired to be, these were not much loftier feelings.

She kept the sensation, whatever its source, rigorously under, and seemed to be very nearly the same frank, affectionate, open-hearted companion that she had been since she and her aunt pitched their tent together. She met Gordon Monro with a resolute appearance of commonplace friendliness when she saw him first after his illness. It was he who was faltering, embarrassed, ill at ease. She seemed to have forgotten the episode in the studio which had brought her into sudden intimacy for the moment ; if he chose they would both ignore it and be as mere acquaintances, yet under the surface each was conscious of a new relationship which it might be hard to smother altogether. He thanked her in a confused way for her goodness to him. "My goodness to you!" she said smiling and raising her eyebrows ; "I have done nothing at all !